Altcoins desktop, browser and web wallets

One night after having dinner with my daughters, we went to a game center. My older daughter played her favorite game involving female anime characters dancing to a rhythm. This spectacle is called Aikatsu. A few days after our visit to the game center, we noticed that her wallet was missing. My wife called the game center and sure enough she had forgotten it there. An employee had found her wallet and sent it over to security. This is typical of the Japanese culture where lost or forgotten items usually end up at a police station and are later reclaimed by their owner.

Altcoins desktop, browser and web wallets

I’ve already mentioned about the benefits of having a hardware wallet, such as the Trezor or Ledger Nano-s, but since their support for altcoins have its limits sometimes a desktop, browser or web wallet needs to be used. Most altcoins have an official wallet which I would recommend using. Some of these official wallets are of a desktop version (Windows, Mac or Linux), others are integrated into certain browsers such as Chrome and yet others are web based. I have used the desktop, browser and web based version wallets for my altcoins that aren’t supported by Trezor.

Are altcoins wallets more secure than this?

The desktop version of the wallets that I have used have a very simple and basic design but it can perform your necessary transactions such as sending and receiving coins as well as storing your coins. There are minor transaction fees that are charged but usually less than what a Bitcoin+ exchange might levy. The same can be said of the browser and web based version wallets, their interface is clean with negligible transaction fees. The browser version wallet is an App that resides within the browser (think Gmail, Docs, etc.) while the web based version must be visited on the coin wallet’s website.

I have found that whether it be a desktop, browser or web based wallet the interface allows me to send and receive coins quicker than my Bitcoin+ exchange and fortunately, I haven’t had any issues with these wallets although it doesn’t mean that I won’t have any in the future. As Nate Silver mentions in The Signal and the Noise, the future is mostly unpredictable because of one’s own bias and overconfidence. Ultimately though, I wish I could store all my altcoins on my hardware wallet.